Typically shellfish (i.e., also known generally as a crustaceans) food items such as crab legs and lobster tails and claws are commonly boiled in their shell and served while still in their shell. This form of preparation and serving requires the person eating these shellfish food items to break open the shell in order to extract the shellfish meat for consumption. The heat does not significantly change the characteristics of the shell and a special utensil is often required to open (e.g., slit open, break open, cut open, etc) the shell.
There have been various different tools and utensils designed for this purpose. However, these known utensils are known to have one or more limitations. Examples of such limitation include, but are not limited to, damaging shellfish meat while opening the shell, being awkward to use and being a utensil that only provides the functionality of opening a shellfish shell. U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,904 to LaSalle discloses a utensil for opening shellfish shells, which exhibits the limitation of use only as a utensil for opening shellfish shells. U.S. Pat. No. 4,569,103 to Taurinskas discloses a crab leg knife that serves the function of opening a shellfish shell, which exhibits the limitation of use only as a utensil for opening shellfish shells. U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,961 to Mueller discloses a fork that serves two purposes (i.e., one being opening shellfish shells and the other being standard fork functionality), which exhibits the limitations of its configuration resulting in meat of the shellfish being damaged while opening the shell and being somewhat awkward to use due to a protruding portions of the utensil (i.e., a fork tine) pushing into the shellfish shell while opening the shell. U.S. Pat. No. 4,172,306 to Hopkins discloses a knife for opening crab legs and other such shellfish shells, which exhibits the limitation of use only as a utensil for opening shellfish shells. U.S. Pat. No. 2,822,845 to Medlin discloses a modified butcher knife with a slot at the tip portion. However, the slot of Medlin does not form a second blade. Further, the knife of Medlin is configured to be used in conjunction with another device that provides a pivot point within the slot to allow greater force to be applied by a primary knife edge of the knife. U.S. Pat. No. 1,843,223 to Hasseler discloses a knife having a blade with a slot in the blade. The slot of Hassler is set back towards a middle of the blade and is designed specifically for skinning animals and is limited in its usefulness for opening a shellfish shell. U.S. Pat. No. 720,202 to White discloses a knife with a slot in the tip portion of the utensil that may be used for opening shellfish shells. The slot is configured such that an elongated pointed prong is formed, which is useful for puncturing a surface of an item for enabling use as a can opener. Although the elongated pointed prong is appropriate for the purposes intended by White, the elongated pointed prong would hinder its use as a common dinner knife in so far as a dinner knife is used to apply spreads and the elongated pointed prong would interfere with that function in a conventional manner.
A skilled person will appreciate that, besides utensils configured for cutting or slitting a shellfish shell, there are other types of utensils intended to ease the removal of meat from within a shellfish shell (e.g., a nutcracker style shell opening utensil). With such a nutcracker-style utensil, the shell is placed between two levers and pressure is applied on each lever to crush the shellfish shell and break it open. However, often this type of utensil crushes the meat, and causes it to sliver. Also, the shellfish shell is broken open only at the general area where the pressure is applied, and so meat is often still trapped in other portions of the shellfish shell.
Therefore, a utensil configured for opening shellfish shells in a manner that overcomes shortcomings associated with conventional utensils used for and/or intended for opening shellfish shells would be useful and advantageous.